NOTICED

NOTICED; Singing in the Buff: The Pure Beefcake Video

By DOUGLAS CENTURY

Published: February 6, 2000

ON a recent sub-Arctic Tuesday night, an army of bundled-up New Yorkers filled the Chelsea nightclub Centro-Fly for a party celebrating the long-awaited release of D'Angelo's album ''Voodoo.'' The club was packed and sweaty, with decor and soul music out of a 1970's time warp: multiple video screens playing images of Curtis Mayfield and vintage ''Soul Train'' episodes, replete with dancers in Day-Glo bell-bottoms.

But the buzz all around the steamy party was about a spanking-new video playing on one of the monitors. There are no retro-looking 70's clothes in this clip. There are, in fact, no clothes at all.

''The Video,'' as it's fast becoming known, is the hugely suggestive clip for D'Angelo's latest single ''Untitled (How Does It Feel).'' The most controversial music video to air in years, it depicts the muscular, cornrowed singer, adorned only in a crucifix necklace, belting out a love song in a soulful falsetto reminiscent of Marvin Gaye and Prince. The entire video consists of one long, leering shot in which the camera focuses first on D'Angelo's lips, then swings down to catch the sweat trickling from his tattooed arms, chiseled chest and abdominal muscles, finally flirting with a peak of shadowed, muscular hip. These images of a powerful, objectified male body have sparked diverging opinions among music fans.

Not surprisingly, the response to the video has been divided largely along sexual lines. Most women watch and swoon; many men turn away and scowl.

''It's so sexy,'' said Danyel Smith, the former editor in chief of Vibe, now an editor at large for Time Inc. ''It's about time that girls had something luscious to look at while they're listening to a song. For years, men have been treated to breasts and butts along with their favorite songs, and women have had to just sit there and endure.''

''People are definitely talking about the video -- it's all I hear,'' said Tracy Cloherty, program director at WQHT-FM, Hot 97. On Tuesday night, D'Angelo was live in the Hot 97 studio while the D.J.'s Angie Martinez and Funkmaster Flex fielded calls from listeners about the video. ''Of course, most of the women loved it,'' Ms. Cloherty said later. ''Some of the men said things like: 'We don't wanna see that kind of stuff. Why do we have to look at that?' Men definitely seem to be threatened by male nudity.''

Spurred by this video buzz, D'Angelo's ''Voodoo,'' the follow-up to his multiplatinum 1995 debut ''Brown Sugar,'' rocketed to No. 1 on the current Billboard album chart, selling 320,000 copies in its first week. The ''Untitled'' video is now in heavy rotation on MTV, and is the No. 1 video on BET. That network recently aired a parody video, featuring a lanky comedian, whose muscular development is, well, less Tyson Beckford than Jimmy Walker.

D'Angelo, in a phone interview, said he was aware of the controversy, but had really not heard anything directly negative from his male fans. ''With men, if there's any negative reaction, I'm not really going to get an honest feedback,'' said the soft-spoken 25-year-old singer from Richmond, whose vocal style and songwriting is often compared to that of classic soul men like Al Green and Eddie Kendricks. ''The women love it, most definitely. But for me personally, the response I've got from both men and women has been pretty cool.''

Still, at the ''Voodoo'' release party, some people were more outspoken. One young woman recalled sitting at home, staring at the video, while her boyfriend snapped, ''Turn the channel -- I don't want to see that gay stuff.'' Marvet Britto, president of the Britto Agency, a public relations firm that represents sports and entertainment figures, said men who were threatened by the male sexuality of the video were ''player haters,'' meaning jealous of others' success. ''They just wish they looked so good,'' Ms. Britto said. ''D'Angelo showed us muscles in that video most women didn't know men could have.''

But is this discomfort among male viewers simply a case of pec-and-ab envy? Some men said they were turned off by the vanity of the clip. ''It's a good song, but I thought he was preening pretty heavily in the video,'' said David Thigpen, a music writer for Time. ''Frankly, it looks like he's trying to one-up Alanis Morissette,'' he said, referring to a video from Ms. Morissette's last album, where she belts out thank-yous to the whole world, while riding on a crowded subway train, naked as Lady Godiva. ''Nakedness is usually an expression of vulnerability -- that was the point of the Alanis Morissette video,'' Mr. Thigpen said. ''But in this case, it's really about power, an in-your-face form of masculinity.''

Male nudity in popular music is nothing new, of course. White artists like Iggy Pop and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have strutted the stage nude or nearly nude, and tough-guy rappers like Treach and LL Cool J have long flaunted their pumped-up torsos in music videos. But the nakedness of the D'Angelo video seems to be tapping into something a little more unsettling. ''He's objectifying himself and selling his own sexuality,'' Ms. Britto noted. ''It's reminiscent of someone like Madonna.'' Perhaps it's this fear of male objectification that has touched a strain of homophobia in the hip-hop community, where it's common to hear epithets for gay men used as synonyms for weakness.

Ms. Smith of Time Inc. said that among women, she had encountered an appreciative reaction to the adult sexuality of the D'Angelo video, which was unlike the squealing of teenagers to the Backstreet Boys. ''Last week, I was at the hair salon, which is always a bustle of activity, people hollering for hair dye,'' Ms. Smith recalled. ''BET and MTV are on all day long with no one paying too much attention, but when that video came on, you could've heard a bobby pin drop. All the women just watched in silence, and when the video was over, there was a collective sigh of 'Oh my God! He is beautiful!' ''

Star Jones, co-host of ''The View'' on ABC, commented: ''D'Angelo is singing about being intimate with a woman that he loves, and it's just basic voice and body, and when you're in an intimate situation with a man, that's really all that's there -- the voice and the body and the light hitting the body in a way that makes you know that this is your man.''

Dominique Trenier, D'Angelo's manager, who conceived the video, said: ''We didn't want an on-screen love interest. We wanted him to be able to make contact with whoever was watching it one-on-one.''

D'Angelo himself said he was initially cool to the concept. ''I was skeptical at first when Dom came to me. I was like, 'Yeah, is this really gonna work?' But when I got there to do it, I felt pretty comfortable.''

Mr. Trenier added: ''Men have given it a slant that they can't look at the video, but if you sit in a roomful of women for a while, they'll eventually just beat you down, express to you how much you should go work out.'' Which brings up one more reason for the ''player haters'' to despise D'Angelo. Though he does work out, he claims not to be fanatical. ''No,'' he said, in answer to an obvious question, ''that's just my natural build. Right before the video I did, like, one little session in the gym.''

Photo: Pecs and Abs: A naked D'Angelo in the music video ''Untitled (How Does It Feel).''